Coastal panel debates control

COLUMBIA — South Carolina shoreline experts are considering whether to transfer local control over coastal emergency orders to the governor or Legislature, along with how to prevent sandbags from being abandoned and turning to debris.

“Some of these issues we’re talking about require us to take a regional statewide approach. And some of these aspects of emergency orders may,” said Sen. Clementa Pinckney, Jasper County’s Democratic senator and part of the 16-member Blue Ribbon Committee on Shoreline Management. He made the comments during the panel’s meeting last week.

Others, such as Sen. Ray Cleary, a Murrells Inlet Republican, and Pawleys Island Mayor William Otis, questioned the need for changes to the current practices, and called for local autonomy.

“In my area, in my counties, home rule seems to be working,” said Cleary.

Carolyn Boltin-Kelly, deputy commissioner for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management said some municipalities welcome the chance to hand those duties over to the state.

“One of the mayors expressed that to me, (that), ‘We don’t want be doing this anymore. We want the state to issue emergency orders. This is too much for us. We don’t want to be in this ball game anymore,’” she said.

The Shoreline Change Advisory Committee has issued a host of recommendations to improve current management practices of the state’s 187 miles of coastline.

The total emergency orders issued by local and state officials for the entire state coastline since 1985 is 116.

Hilton Head Island has issued seven emergency orders, which prompted the use of sandbags and sand scraping, and in an incident last August, beach renourishment activities were necessary. Harbor Island has issued two emergency orders, and Hunting Island has issued four, according to state data.

The most orders have been issued in Edisto Beach, which has had 31. Although most were for individual parcels of private property, according to state records.

In the 1980s, there were only nine emergency orders, in the 1990s there were 43, and since 2000 there have been 64. Officials expect the number to grow as storms become more frequent and beach renourishment funding becomes spottier.

Currently the state only gives authorization to private property owners and municipalities to place sandbags. The state does not pay to place them or remove them, nor directly install them, according to OCRM spokesman Dan Burger.

An emergency order, which only authorizes the use of sandbags, sand scraping or renourishment, are currently allowed to be issued by an appointed county, municipal or state official, upon written notification to ORCM or within 72 hours. For instance, if a parking lot was in danger of washing away because of a storm, locals are allowed to sandbag it if they let state coastal officials know afterward.

The blue-ribbon panel is also considering a recommendation to narrow the definition of an “emergency,” so that it only addresses weather-related situations, rather than chronic erosion problems or property-status situations.

Also on the table: Thwarting deadbeat sandbag-layers.

Under one proposal, property owners who are authorized by an emergency order to lay sandbags would have to post bond as an enforcement mechanism for their removal. In some cases this may be a municipality, but more often would be private individual property owners.

The concern is that abandoned sandbags, which are about 5 gallons in size, can reduce public dry-sand beach access, take over dunes and recreational space, wash up on other beaches miles away, and create debris when they are torn apart.

“I got a call from somebody in Georgia saying I think we have your sandbags down here. Whether they were, I don’t know,” said Boltin-Kelly.